Is there something out there that I can use to go through my system ridding it of items that may not have been completely un-installed and things of that nature. Since I am a newb in the Linux world, I'm not sure where everything gets installed etc...so attempting to navigate to each section and then delete would be time consuming and im assuming not the correct way. For things that show up in Synaptic I of course use it, or rpm -e package name in the command line. ...it's the non-rpm items ya know?

Thank in advance!!!

the best thing is learn to live with those unused files;
disk storage is relatively cheap these days. I have files from 1996/97 i almost surely don't need.

i sniff for possible rm'bies by
cd /
du -s *|sort -n
then cd "biggest" (repeat this for top 3/4)
du -s *|sort -n
ls -lSr

also
find / -type f -maxdepth 5 -mtime +180 -size +100000c -ls 2>/dev/null|less
(5, 180, 10000 are arbitrary)

you can check a prospective rm'bie by rpm -qf file

This won't help much for programs that you've already installed, but in the future when you install from source, try using checkinstall. It replaces the 'make install' step and creates a Redhat *.rpm (or Slackware *.tgz or Debian *.deb) package, so you can easily and completely uninstall it with rpm (or pkgtool or dpkg).

To remove existing programs, you need to go to the source tree and type 'make uninstall'. If you've already deleted it, you can try recreating it from the original tarball, re-installing, and then running 'make uninstall'. However, keep in mind that some Makefiles don't have uninstall procedures, and of those that do, some are less than ideal.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere